From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Space Age is a contemporary period
encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology,
and the cultural developments influenced by these events. The Space
Age is generally considered to have begun with Sputnik (1957).

Contents

Beginning

The Space Age began with the development of several technologies
that culminated on October 4, 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. This
was the world's first artificial satellite, orbiting the Earth in
98.1 minutes and weighing in at 83 kg. The launch of Sputnik 1
ushered a new era of political, scientific and technological
achievements that became known as the Space Age.

The Space Age was characterized by rapid development of new
technology in a close race mostly between the USA and the Soviet Union. Rapid
advances were made in rocketry, materials science, computers and other areas.
Much of the technology originally developed for space applications
has been spun off and found other uses.

The Space Age reached its peak with the Apollo program
which captured the imagination of much of the world's population.
The landing of Apollo 11
was an event watched by over 500 million people around the world
and is widely recognized as one of the defining moments of the 20th
century. Since then and with the end of the space race due to the
collapse
of the Soviet Union, public attention has largely moved to
other areas.

During the 1990s funding for space related programs fell sharply
as the Soviet Union disintegrated and NASA no longer had any direct competition. Also,
public perception of the dangers and cost of space exploration in
the USA was greatly affected by the Challenger
disaster in 1986.

Since then participation in space launches have increasingly
widened to more governments and commercial interests. Since the
1990s, the current period has more often been referred to as the Information Age
rather than the Space Age, since space exploration and
space-related technologies are no longer felt to be commonplace by
significant portions of the public.

Several countries now have space programs; from related
technology ventures to full fledge space programs with launch
facilities. There are many scientific and commercial satellites in
use today, with a total of hundreds of satellites in orbit, and several countries
have plans to send humans into space.

Earlier
spaceflights

The Space Age might also be considered to have begun much
earlier than October 4, 1957, because on October 3, 1942, a German
A4 rocket, a prototype version of the V-2
rocket program, reached space. It thus became the first
man-made object to enter space, albeit only briefly. Since this
flight was undertaken in secrecy, it wasn't public knowledge for
many years afterwards. Further, the German launch, as well as the
subsequent sounding rocket tests performed in both
the USA and USSR during the late 1940s and early 1950s, were not
considered significant enough to start a new age because they did
not reach orbit. Having a rocket powerful enough to reach orbit
meant that a nation had the ability to place a payload anywhere on
the planet, or to use another term, possessed an inter-continental ballistic missile. The
fact that after such a development nowhere on the planet was safe
from a nuclear warhead is why the orbit standard is used to define
when the space age started.[1]